Page 8 of By the Orchid and the Owl
Her four-fingered hand came flying so fast, I didn’t even register the sting of the slap until after my face was angled sideways.
“Lies,” the woman hissed. “Everyone tossed from that damned island has a magic, andmagic, my dear, is worth its weight in gold around here. Now tell me which one you have so I know how much I can sell you for.”
“Not that you’ll be able to sell her for much,” someone behind her snickered, followed by general chuckles of agreement. “The island only throws away their scraps. This one won’t make us more than a pound or two.”
Clearly, I was expected to engage. Throwing my fiercest glare at the so-called pirates, I said, “I get it. I won’t run away or mess with the island’s shield or… or kill anyone.”And Iwillpass the test. I’m not anybody’s scraps.
Instantly, a tugging sensation sucked me back up into a world of solid ground. I blinked against the happy stroke of sunlight on my face as the crowd around me muttered and rubbed their heads.
“That,” called the brown-haired prince, still standing on his pedestal of solid air, “is what awaits you if you can’t prove your worth. This island doesn’t tolerate the weak or the out-of-control, but the pirates out there?” Something shifted in his voice. “They would love to tolerate you.”
The first woman smiled in that plastered way and called out with her chipper voice, “Now at this time, we would like you to please follow your nearest prince or princess so we can give you a tour and lead you to the Branding arena, where you will all be staying tonight in preparation for the ceremony.”
Within the span of a blink, she and the others sunk back into the crowd.
Chaos exploded again, elbows and shoulders pushing against me as everyone surged toward their nearest guide. As if wehadn’tjust sunk into the island itself and hallucinated a possible future as a collective unit.
I let myself get swept away by the current. My nearest guide wasn’t the cocky, smirking prince, but a different, higher-pitched one with a buzzcut. I focused on every word he said as we swept from the courtyard to a small, red-bricked road branching off of it.
The golden domed building was the Testing Center, where we would perform quarterly practice tests before the final one. The wedged section of buildings behind us was the learning sector for Object Summoners—I felt a pang of longing for Fabian and Don at that—and the section over to the left, full of cages and miniature stadiums, was for Shape Shifters. When we meandered through the section for Wild Whisperers, monkeys perched on the rooftops, watching us pass, and butterflies spiraled around our faces.
Then we came to the largest road that ran from the courtyard to the estuary I’d seen flying in. Bascite Boulevard, our guide said it was called. From where we stood, the Element Wielder section lay on one side, crowned in what looked like a perpetual layer of brewing clouds. On the other side, the Mind Manipulator section sported neat rows of all-white, impassive-looking classrooms that gave me chills.
“Looks like they torture people in there,” a girl next to me murmured.
I tried to catch her eye, to think of a joke related to torture (was it even possible to make a joke about torture?), anything to make a friend here… but she had already plunged forward with everyone else, and soon there were too many bodies between us for me to even reach her.
My arms seemed to hang too awkwardly at my side.
Like a tide squeezing through a ravine, we crossed an arched metal bridge over the estuary and came to the row of those gigantic houses lining the other end of Bascite Boulevard—five on each side.
“These here are the Shape Shifter houses,” our guide said now, and I realized I was closer to him than ever before. I could see the sweat darkening the back of his shirt and the amber buzzcut frosting his head. He was the one who’d been sitting on the swarm of bees. “Boys’ house on the left, girls’ house on the right.”
The Shape Shifter mansions sat across from each other like mirror images of one another. They were made of brick with shingled rooftops and sweeping staircases leading to their front doors. Dark, but cozy. A few older kids lounged on those steps, smoking and watching us pass. One of them had horns protruding from either side of his head.
As I watched, a buddy nearby smacked the guy’s arm, and his horns melted back into his skull. Yep, I could definitely imagine them imitating pirates for fun.
“Now, these are the Element Wielder houses,” the buzzcut prince was saying, pointing to the next pair of mansions.
These ones were made of what looked like black alabaster, with widespread windows and people milling about on the flat, gated rooftop, as if to be closer to the sky. As we passed, a young woman from the girls’ side lobbed a snowball at us. She looked vaguely familiar, and I realized with a double take that she was from Alderwick. Her name was Julie or Joyce or something like that. It had been three years since she’d left, and I’d never interacted with her beyond a polite nod or hello.
The woman didn’t notice me, anyway. Her snowball hit a boy next to me, exploding on his head, and she and her friends doubled over with laughter.
“Are you okay?” I asked the boy, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He’d stopped in the middle of the tide to yell at her… wanting to fight or flirt, I couldn’t tell.
Feeling sicker and lonelier by the moment, I moved on as our guide called out information about the third pair of mansions.
“These are the Object Summoners’. Friendly lot, as you can probably tell.”
Indeed, the Object Summoners lived in quaint wooden houses with gingerbread-style turrets and wraparound porches lined in green trim. The lump in my throat rose and fell with each of my breaths as I thought of Fabian and Don once living in the left one.
If only they were here. If only I could run into that house and find them sitting in their favorite armchairs and give them one last hug and—
A single tear slipped out. Shit, no. I could not be crying right now.
I batted it away, raised my chin, and just barely caught the buzzcut prince’s next words.
“—my sector, the Wild Whisperer houses.”
